Congrats to Rally Software and Return Path – two of my portfolio companies that made the Best Companies to Work for in Colorado ’09*.* Unlike many “happy lists” this is a pretty serious one as it’s put together by the Society of Human Resource Management, Jobing.com, and ColoradoBiz and involves a survey process by Modern Think. Rally came in first place in the Medium Sized Company category (100 to 249 employees) and Return Path came in either in the Small Company category (25 to 99 employees). While Return Path has about 150 employees, less than 100 are in Colorado (although Colorado is their largest office) so I guess they ended up only looking at locally based employees.

Last week I did an interview on Rally Cafe with Chris Spagnuolo. Some of the questions came from real time tweets to the show but we didn’t get to a handful. Chris just emailed them to me – I figured I’d do a quick job of picking them off for those that asked or were following the show. @jordanmuela What does Brad view as common themes in the investments (companies) that have failed? My failures have several common characteristics (note that these are applicable only to me – plenty of other entrepreneurs and investors have made plenty of money in these areas.) I’ve consistently failed when I’ve invested in companies (a) in markets / segments that I know nothing about, (b) founded / run by people that I don’t like / enjoy spending time with, (c) that are “rollups” – where the company is trying to consolidate an industry focused on “rolling up” a bunch of small companies into one larger business, (d) based in Europe. What “didn’t work” is one of the things that informs our thematic approach at Foundry Group.

Over the past 15 years I’ve been to thousands of board meetings. Last week I had four; this week I have two. I’ve spent a lot of time – often during board meetings – thinking about how to make them better and more effective. Yesterday, Fred Wilson (who was at the Return Path board meeting in Boulder with me) wrote a great post titled Face To Face Board Meetings. Fred and I have been on a number of boards of the years and I strongly agree with his post. To be effective, board meetings need to be (a) in person and (b) there is immense value in a board dinner the night before a board meeting (maybe not every meeting, but at least once a quarter).

Today is an exciting day in Boulder as it’s TechStars Investor / Demo Day 2009. The unveiling of the 2009 class happens in a few hours to a large audience of mentors, angel investors, VCs, and the local tech gang. I’m super proud of the 2009 Boulder TechStars gang. This is the third year that we’ve done TechStars and it just gets better every year. Once again, David Cohen, his team, and the Boulder mentor community have done a masterful job of working with ten “pre-seed” companies to get them up and running.

It’s Tuesday, so that means – well, I’m not sure what that means. But I do know that if you want to watch me on video, following are three choices. First up is Episode 10 of TechStars: The Founders – Crunch Time. Special guest appearances from me, Paul Berberian, the Zenie Bottle, and the printer from Office Space. The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 10 “Crunch Time” from Andrew on Vimeo.

This is an exciting week for TechStars Boulder as Thursday is Investor / Demo Day. As I was getting reacquainted with the early morning view from my condo in Boulder and pondered the great town I live it, I came across a few fun things. First was a long post from the guys at Occipital (TechStars Boulder 2008) titled 2009 at Occipital: From the Hangar to the Crawler. In this post, Occipital reminisces about the path they’ve traveled so far this year, including the creation of RedLaser, ClearCam, and OBE-1 (the Occipital Business Engine). Look for another really interesting thing from them later this week.

I am so totally, utterly, and completely sick of air travel. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve had to put up with me whining for the past week on my Denver to Seattle to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Denver travel fiasco (hint: not a single plane was on time.) I hurt my back playing tennis ten days ago so the extra stimuli of lower back pain made the experience extra-special enjoyable.

I’m having more and more Atlas Shrugged moments these days. Today’s was courtesy of an add on LinkedIn. My first response to the ad was “I’m not sure I want to see my concerns addresses by the White House.” The White House – after all, is a building. It turns out that this is an event that is titled “The Effects of Health Care Reform on Small Business.”

One of my favorite quotes is “Do, or do not. There is no try.” When you say it (or think it), you must use Yoda’s mix of a gravelly+whiney voice and pretend you are short and green. Variations of the quote show up regularly throughout TechStars including on the walls. The video this week is about “doing” and includes guest appearances from friends and mentors Howard Lindzon, Jeff Clavier, and Dave McClure.